Quiet book pages, Tic Tac Toe

I think that it is nice to have a gender neutral pages in a quiet book, and by all means I understand that girls like and play sports as well, but I just think that it is nice to have a sports page for the little boys that have to spend most of their time buttoning on flowers. I have seen tic tac toe pages in other quiet books, but I think that this version is a lot of fun, I call it "tic tac toe-three balls in a row". In Clark's book this page consisted of footballs and basketballs. I really wasn't pleased with how the footballs turned out, but I think that these baseballs are a lot of fun. I traced the bottom of a spool to make the circles and then used the spool to mark the arcs in both the basketballs and the baseballs. The trickiest part about this page is stitching the baseballs. I adjusted a decorative stitch on my sewing machine so that it was the best proportion to my circle and then hoped for the best and started stitching. The baseballs are by no means perfect, but are homemade things supposed to be perfect?

The basketballs and baseballs attach with velcro. Snaps could be used, but I think that velcro is much easier for young children. Even if your toddler isn't able to play tic tac toe yet, they will have fun pulling off the balls and repositioning them.

In my son's book I used a decorative stitch for the tic tac toe board, but I chose to use felt for Danny's. The decorative stitches on my machine like to skip so felt seemed like a better option.

I think that it is a good idea to make a few spare pieces for your tic tac toe board. I have seen quiet books that include a pocket on the page, but I wanted to have my board as big as possible on the page. I figure that spare pieces can be kept in the pocket on the back of the cover.